


Remember the Weight of Your World

by myhomeistheshire



Category: Archie Comics, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: AU where nothing in Riverdale happens, Betty Deserves Better, Betty centric, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 05:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14948399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myhomeistheshire/pseuds/myhomeistheshire
Summary: Betty decides to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler-it, and runs away to New York City.





	Remember the Weight of Your World

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration taken from 'The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler', an icon of its own and my favorite children's book to date. Title from 'Son My Son', by Milo Greene.

It doesn’t come as a decision. At least, it doesn’t feel like it. Instead, it feels like a long series of steps that somehow lead to this.

 

 

Step one happens at lunch on a Tuesday, huddled between Jughead and Veronica and Archie across from her, downing his sandwich like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“-Anyways,” Jughead is saying, “the admissions officer said if I can get some real, published writing to add to my application before the cutoff then there’s no way I won’t get in.” He shoves the rest of his sub into his mouth, then looks over at Betty, gesturing wildly as he chokes down the food. “So what d’you think, Cooper?” He asks with a grin. “Will your parents let me write an article or two?”

Betty sighs, squeezing her hands together under the table. “I don’t know, Jug.” She admits. “My mom’s a pretty hard sell.”

“Well, let me know,” he tells her, and he looks so hopeful for the first time in a long time - this is his chance, she realizes. His one chance to get out of Riverdale, away from the serpents, to become the person that he’s always meant to be. So Betty makes a split second decision that she’ll get him that article, no matter what the cost.

 

 

Step two happens over the dinner table the next night; the Cooper family sitting around the ornate mahogany table, eating neatly, making polite conversation. Betty takes a deep breath and says nonchalantly, “Hey, mom?”

“Yes, Elizabeth?” Alice asks, pulling apart her vegetables with a fork.

“You know Jughead’s school advisor told him he could apply to NYU, and Columbia, and like...everywhere, for writing.”

“Is that so?” She replies uninterestedly. “I can’t say I saw this coming, with his father being who he is, and now him joining the serpents, but I suppose everyone deserves a chance to turn their life around.”

 _Like you did, Mom?_ Betty wants to ask but doesn’t, because she needs to play the good daughter; needs to keep Alice in a receptive mood.

“Well, he’s pretty sure he’s going to get in, but one thing that would really help his application is to get an article published. And so I just thought -”

“No.”

“But mom -”

“I said _no,_ Elizabeth. We don’t need a wannabe serpent-turned-reporter dabbling in the family business.”

Betty takes a deep breath and unclenches her hands. She knew this would happen. She expected it. She’s okay, she’s okay, she’s okay -

“What if I quit the Vixens?”

Alice looks up; surprised, caught off guard. “Excuse me?”

“You want me to spend more time on school, right? What if I quit the Vixens, and I’ll - I’ll hang out with the gang less. I’ll make college my number one priority. _Please_.”

Betty watches the way her mother sets down her cutlery and folds her hands in her lap; careful, calculating.

“All year,” Alice Cooper says, and the initial rush of victory through Betty’s veins is conquered by the sinking realization of what she’s giving up. “I want to see improvements _all year._ And tell your friend he can write one article.”

  


 

Step three, step four, step five...they all blur together. When Betty tells Cheryl she’s quitting the vixens; when Veronica confronts her after the first practice she isn’t there for; when Archie sends flashlight signals through her window every night for a week, while she pulls the blankets over her head and pretends to be asleep. Jughead’s breathless _thank you, Betty, thank you so much_ is the thing that she clings to.

 

It goes on until March.

 

The time goes by so quickly, and so slow. Every morning she’s up at 5, slipping into her running clothes; feeling the concrete pounding beneath her feet as she forces her asthmatic lungs to breathe. Pushes nails into skin. Until she ends up back in front of her house, dry heaving from the cold, legs shaking from exertion. Every morning she washes the blood off her palms in the shower; it’s like her daily update, _this is how your mental health is going._

 

(it doesn’t matter. alice cooper is happy and jughead is getting out and she only has five more months, five more months, five more months.)

  


 

 

The final step happens when she recieves her letter from NYU.

 

It’s a large package. She knows what that means. She should feel happy, but she also knows what Alice Cooper will say - _Congratulations, Elizabeth. I just hope you don’t forget that there’s a family business for you here, after you’ve got your degree all the way in New York._

 

Betty stands there, holding the envelope, for what feels like days. Sees her life span out ahead of her - taking journalism classes for a few years, coming home for Christmases and summers; moving back home to work at the Register; marrying some dickhead upperclassmen and having babies until she kills herself.

She looks down at the envelope, and suddenly everything she’s ever wanted seems to go hazy. Enough. Enough. Enough.

She runs upstairs to her room and grabs the first container she sees - Polly’s violin case. She grabs her favorite sweaters from the closet, followed by two pairs of jeans, a handful of underwear, and tampons. The last thing she does is grab her emergency fund from under her bed, and shove the NYU envelope in the trash on her way out the door.

 

It isn’t until she arrives at the bus stop, ticket in hand, two hours to go, that she breaks down. She pushes the door to the grimy bathroom open and braces herself on the sink; _breathe in, out; in, out._

 

 _What am I doing,_ she thinks, staring at her mascara-streaked face in the mirror; this is not the Betty Cooper she thought she was. This person, here, is spontaneous and wild and not-thinking; she feels numb and alive in every way that Betty has never known to be.

 

She wipes away the mascara and boards the bus.

  


 

 

So this is where the steps have led her. Standing outside the Greyhound station, in the middle of NYC, with nothing but a makeup bag full of cash and a violin case. She ditched her phone at the Riverdale bus station, which she’s now regretting - she knows that anyone can track her through it, but being without a maps app in this insanely large city is giving her a panic attack. She sits down on a bench and tries to breathe through it, digging her fingernails in harder than ever; curling her whole body around the violin case. Her emergency fund won’t last her a month in even a seedy motel; not to mention food, and new clothes.

She looks down at the case in her hands, and bursts out laughing as it hits her.

 

It doesn’t take long to find Central Park, and after that she knows where she’s going - she went to the Met on a field trip in 8th grade and spent the rest of the year obsessed with it. She makes it to the museum and it’s everything she remembered it being; stone pillars, arching windows, grecian faces staring down at her. She pays the entrance fee and spends the day wandering around the exhibits. She’s so overcome by everything inside that she almost forgets what she’s looking for - back exits, hidden corners, rooftop cameras.

 

The first night is the scariest.

 

She finds a spot she can just barely curl up in, in the corner behind a cabinet, and sneaks in. Waits until she hears the guards pass once, twice, three times; before she curls up in a way she knows is going to screw up her back, and manages to fall asleep.

 

She wakes up to her watch alarm at 9am; her back and neck are aching, and the violin case is digging into her knees. She waits ten heart-stopping minutes before daring to climb out and run to the washrooms; she can exit through a service entrance, but assumes that they’re alarmed until the museum opens at 10. She spends 50 minutes huddled on top of a toilet, regretting every choice she’s ever made and wishing she had her phone with her, until her watch turns to 10 and she dashes towards the door.

 

 

As strangely as it seems, after a few days it becomes normal. She spends the day in the museum, or more regularly, wandering around the city, and then slips back into the museum through the back entrance just before 5:30.

The city terrifies her until she spots a library on one of her walks and with a thrill, signs up for a library card under the name _Veronica Lodge._ She spends the next few weeks wasting hours and hours sitting in Central Park reading. She’d forgotten how much she’d loved reading for pleasure, ever since she started high school, and it’s a new sort of bliss to delve back into the hidden worlds of childhood. She starts out with the easier reads - _Harry Potter, Inkheart, The Outsiders._ Once she’s caught up on those she starts picking up every book she’s loved and every one she’s always wanted to read; unashamedly delving into the lives of Franny Glass, Maud Flynn, Holden Caulfield. She finds a patch of trees where she can cry while reading _The Bell Jar,_ gasping in the way the words catch her; she rereads it twice before she returns it, her heart shattering and then healing every time with the feeling of not being so defiantly alone.

 

She considers logging into her facebook account just to see what messages have been sent, but it’s too risky - instead she uses a library computer to google her own name, and immediately three articles pop up; “Town Sweetheart Goes Missing”, _New York Times,_ “Where Is Our Daughter”, _The Register,_ and a missing children’s database. She clicks on the first one, a pang rushing through her chest. There’s no way she’s reading what her parents wrote in the Register.

 

_Two weeks ago in the idyllic Vermont town known as Riverdale, a shock previously unknown ran through the community. On March 3, 17 year old Elizabeth Cooper, daughter of journalists Alice and Hal Cooper, disappeared without a trace. In a larger city Cooper might have been just another name on a growing list, however here in Riverdale the missing children database has only 4 other names since the town’s beginnings in 1941. “I just don’t know what happened,” Alice Cooper said tearfully, standing with her husband and 19-year-old daughter Polly in front of their home only a week after the disappearance of their youngest child. “Elizabeth was a good girl. She made good grades, had plenty of friends, and was just accepted into NYU. She wouldn’t have just left. We need the FBI to treat this like a child abduction, because that’s what it was. There’s no way Elizabeth would have left of her own will.”_

_Alice Cooper’s defense of her daughter’s disappearance sounds like it fits at first, but the more we looked into the life of Elizabeth Cooper, the more her story began to unravel. After all, if Elizabeth was kidnapped, why would her abductor have taken clothes from her closet? Why was her phone discovered in a trash can near the Greyhound station?_

_“Betty [Elizabeth] is an amazing person,” said a Riverdale High classmate of Cooper’s, who asked to have their name kept anonymous. “But she was under a lot of stress. Her mom was a perfectionist, and Betty was driving herself into the ground trying to please her. Everything was about NYU, and about getting into journalism so she could take over the Register one day. I’m not saying she did, but if she ran away...I just hope she’s safe, and that she’s doing okay.”_

_The FBI is currently investigating the claims of a child abduction, however for now we’re left to wonder. Is Elizabeth Cooper’s story one of an A-list girl torn from her perfect life, or a high schooler driven to the edge by the expectations of her family?_

 

Betty re-reads the article three times before closing it with a deep breath. Her hands are shaking, but this reminds her again why she’d left - of course her mother would blindly assume that the only way she’d have gone was if she’d been kidnapped. Of course nothing occurred to her but her grades and college admission.

 

Betty leaves the library with three new books, and drags her mind away from Riverdale.

 

It startled her, how long it’s been. In two days it’ll be a month since she disappeared. A month since she’d left behind her old life and become - she doesn’t know who. Not Elizabeth Cooper, at least. Just Betty.

 

 

 

She’s sitting on her favorite bench reading an anthology of Keats’ letters, discreetly wiping away a tear, when it happens.

“I should like to cast the die for Love or death; I have no patience with anything else,” quotes a too-familiar voice from beside her, and she jumps. Slams the book shut, and turns to see -

Jughead. Of course it would be him.

 

She doesn’t know what to say, just clutches the book to her chest and pulls her knees up, shielding herself from she doesn’t know what.

 “I didn’t tell your mom I was coming,” Jughead says, settling on the bench beside her. “I didn’t tell anyone except Veronica and Archie, if that’s what your worried about.”

Betty clears her throat, thinks of a million things to say - but nothing comes out.

“I got into NYU, you know.” He continues nonchalantly as Betty desperately tries to take it all in - his new haircut, barely showing underneath the beanie; the way he’s not quite meeting her eyes; the nervous fidget he has where he scratches the back of his neck. “Polly told me about how you got your parents to agree to the article; she’s a bit of a blabbermouth when she’s upset. And you leaving was...I mean, it was upsetting.”

Betty finally has something to say. “It wasn’t just that. It wasn’t because of you.”

Jughead turns to meet her gaze at last, and to her surprise his eyes are watery. “I know it wasn’t all because of me, Cooper. But you could’ve - you could’ve talked to us about what was going on, and it was because of me - because of that _stupid fucking article -_ that you felt like you couldn’t.” He pauses and takes a deep breath, focuses back on the trees ahead of them. “I missed you, Betty. I missed you even before you left, and then after...I don’t know. It was like that was it. Like Riverdale lost its _Riverdale-_ ness.”

He stops speaking, and they sit there for long enough that it would be awkward with anyone else, except. Except it’s Jughead.

“How did you find me?” Betty asks, and at this he finally smiles and looks over at her.

“Polly mentioned her violin case was missing. And in elementary school you were always carrying around _The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler..._ I figured it was a long shot. But here you are.”

Betty manages a smile, the first one since she’s seen him. “Here I am.”

 

 

Jughead spends the rest of the day with her, walking around central park. She didn’t realize how much she’d missed him until now; until he’s here, walking along the treeline with their elbows knocking into each other. “So are you really staying at the Met?” He asks, and; “you know I’ve been _begging_ you to read Keats since grade 9, right? Seriously, if I knew it would take running away to get you into his writing I would have put you on a bus _years_ ago.”

She tells him about her many almost-disastrous run ins with the Met security, and about the one time she almost got mugged in Hell’s Kitchen; he tells her about how Veronica and Archie finally started dating, and about how life with his newly-released dad has been. It feels like it’s been only moments when the sun starts lowering, and Betty realizes she’s missed the cutoff for sneaking into the museum.

“Mother _fucker,_ ” she spits, glancing at her watch, and a surprised laugh bursts out of Jughead.

“I don’t think I’ve heard you swear in like...my entire life,” he says, sticking his hands into his pockets and trying to keep the smile from his lips.

“Yeah, yeah, goody-two-shoes Betty Cooper speaking,” she says, rolling her eyes. “But seriously, I was supposed to be at the museum like two hours ago. They’re gonna have the security all up, and -”

“I’ve got a motel room,” Jughead says with a shrug. “Come stay with me. Not like _that,_ ” he grins at her pointed look, “I’ll sleep on the floor. But seriously, wouldn’t it be nice to sleep in an actual bed for once?”

Betty thinks about her options; a night avoiding the cops on a central park bench, or staying with her best friend for a night. It isn’t really a choice.

“Fine,” she says, “but I’m taking the floor. I don’t think my body could handle the softness of a bed anymore; I’ve gone full-on caveman.”

 

They take the subway to the Motel 6 he’d booked a room at; Betty feels a sense of pride as she navigates the subway system with ease, with Jughead looking on. _See, I fit in here,_ she wants to show him; _I belong._

She waits until Jughead checks in and then follows him up to the room; he sets his backpack down and tells her _wait here,_ and then disappears out the door.

For the first time that day, Betty feels her anxiety pounce back into her chest. _He could be calling Alice,_ the voice in her head tells her, _or the FBI, or Sheriff Keller -_

She takes deep breaths and watches the clock for seventeen minutes, until there’s a knock on the door and Jughead pokes his head back in.

“I was starving,” he tells her, carrying in a pizza box and what looks to be a grocery store bag full of chips. “I got your disgusting kind -” he throws a bag of ketchup chips at her - “and then some actual decent food, also.” He tears open a bag of Salt and Vinegar and settles onto the bed beside her, picking up the remote to turn on the tv.  There’s only four channels, so they end up watching a spanish-dubbed episode of _Master Chef._ Betty pulls the blanket over her legs and leans over just enough that her head is resting on Jughead’s shoulder.

“I missed you a lot,” she tells him softly, and he doesn’t respond for a second; just reaches over and squeezes her hand.

“I missed you too, Betty Cooper.”

 

She falls asleep with a slice of pizza in one hand and Jughead’s fingers curled around the other; for the first time in years feeling safe, and loved, and known.

 

 

 

The morning comes with sunlight in the windows and a newly-nervous Jughead, and she should have known that this couldn’t last.

 

“Come home with me,” he insists almost immediately. “I get that you don’t want to deal with your family - seriously, _I get it._ But what’s your other plan? Stay here, get a fake ID, work in retail for the rest of your life?”

“I don’t know, Jug! I _don’t know_. But I just know that whatever it is - it’s better than going back there.” Betty uncurls her hands, and he sees the scars on her palms for the first time - she can tell, because he sucks in a quick breath and his hands twitch together. “I can’t go back there,” she whispers. “Please, Jughead - I can’t go back.”

“You could finish your diplomas,” he tells her, but he’s lost his antagonism. “Finish high school, come to NYU with me, and then you never have to go back.”

Betty doesn’t meet his gaze, and when she speaks, her voice is soft. “I can’t live with her again, Juggie. I just can’t.”

 

He leaves later that afternoon; she walks him to the Greyhound and he presses something into her hand before he steps away. She looks down and sees that it’s a burner phone; and she laughs.

“I’m really like Harriet the Spy now, hey?”

“Just keep it, please. So I can call you.” He waits for her nod, then presses her into a quick hug; plants a kiss on her forehead. “Stay gold, Betty Cooper,” he says with a forced smile, and then he turns and boards the bus.

 

Betty curls her hands around herself as the bus pulls away, feeling an ache that she hadn’t felt since Riverdale. She turns away just as the phone chimes - _Miss you already, Harriet,_ the text reads. And it feels like maybe, just maybe, this time isn’t another ending.

 

 

 

It’s halfway through April when Jughead calls her excitedly, stumbling over his words so much she can barely understand him at first. “Slow down, Jug,” she laughs, until she hears what he says next -

“You can stay with the Andrews’,” he bursts, “if you come home, you can stay with them - Fred’s on board with it, Archie’s always excited to see you - please, Betty. I’ve even talked with Sheriff Keller. Come home on your birthday next week, and they can’t make you move home. He can even stop them from seeing you, if you want. Please, Betty. _Please._ ”

 

It’s the same voice that made her sacrifice her life for an article; so of course, Betty Cooper says yes.

 

 

She pulls into the Greyhound bus station a week later, on her 18th birthday. Jughead’s waiting for her in the parking lot, Veronica and Archie behind him. She barely makes it off of the bus before Veronica crushes her in a hug, Archie and Jughead following suit.

“You _complete traitor,_ ” Veronica tells her, but the sting is taken out of it by the fact that her arms are still locked around Betty. “You left me in this hick town with only the boys for company, while you gallivanted around my favorite city without me! It’s a good thing you’re cute, Betty Cooper.”

“We’re gonna be roommates!” Archie tells her brightly, once they’ve stepped back - “well, housemates, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Betty returns his grin, “we are. Here’s to hoping my mother doesn’t break into your house to see me, though.”

“I’ve got a baseball bat under my bed,” Archie jokes, “she wouldn’t dare.”

 

They walk over to Pop’s to grab milkshakes and then wander over to the Riverdale High football field; and it isn’t until they’re settled on the grass, Veronica tossing dandelions at Archie, Betty recounting her New York adventures with Jughead butting in for commentary, that she really feels the swell of being home.

“So, NYU?” Jughead asks when she’s finished recounting her story. “I’ll see you there, right?”

“If I can still pass my diplomas,” Betty says with a small smile. “I’m minoring in creative writing, with an undeclared major for right now. All I know is that I really, _really_ don’t want to spend my life working at the Register for my parents.”

“Here’s to that,” Veronica quips, lifting her milkshake up in a toast.

 

They walk back to the house, and Archie and Veronica disappear inside while Jughead lingers on the front steps; Betty feels a sudden flush of shyness rise up, for no reason.

“I’m just - I’m really glad you’re home,” he says earnestly. “You have no idea what missing you is like.”

“I think I have some idea,” Betty says; and Elizabeth Cooper would have said goodnight and left it at that. But the Betty, Just Betty, that spent a month homeless in New York takes a step closer, feels the sprinkling of rain on her cheeks as she pushes herself to her tiptoes to meet his lips with hers.

 

 

(when they go to NYU, they tell everyone it’s cheaper to rent a flat together than it would be to stay in separate dorms; but really, it just makes everything better to come home to _their_ apartment, to walk around central park holding hands, to pass each other in the halls and say things like _I love you_ and _see you at home_.)

 

 

Just Betty moves to New York with the man she’s always loved, and thinks she might not be afraid of what she is becoming, after all.

  


 

 


End file.
